Some quickies

This, that, and the other:

• When I saw that I was mentioned in an article in the Seattle Times (Programmer's seat open to Tiger users), I should have known that it would have been written by Glenn Fleishman. Thanks for the book plug, Glenn!
  
  
• Enter the VersionTracker Style Contest by designing a valid CSS-based theme for them. Top prize is a 23" Cinema Display. Second prize is a Mac mini. Third prize is a 60 Gb iPod Photo. Go forth and do something cool.
  
  
• I spent too much of yesterday and today testing that Jabber hack I blogged about yesterday. Number of successful chats: zero. Thanks to all who volunteered to help, but I've given up. I don't know what the problems are, but there are too many to make it worthwhile for me to solve a fairly small problem. All you people on Yahoo and MSN — just get AIM accounts already, okay?
  
  
• I've got a list of random H'burg mentions that I said I'd do periodically. Here you go:
  • Another journalist on a junket (why can't they ever hire someone who already lives here?).
  • The Wine Blog of Clan Geek mentioned this town, but what struck me was a different post there:

    Another gift, I believe. I kept the bottle, so it must have impressed me. But honestly I cannot recall anything about it.
    
    Charles Shaw, Merlot, 2001 California. Cellared and bottled by Charles Shaw Winery, Napa, CA.

    I laughed for about ten minutes, and if you recognized the name, you laughed too.
  • Justin says Healdsburg rocks!. Yes, it does. And the first image on this page couldn't have been taken more than a few yards from my office.
  
  
  
• Tom was supposed to blog about the Healdsburg Future Farmers Country Fair Twilight Parade that took place last Thursday, but has not yet done so. It's one of our favorite events in this town. The best bit, imo: the High School band playing Louie, Louie. Go 'hounds!

MSN and Yahoo IM via iChat

I'm following the directions posted at Mac OS X Hints and All Forces.com to make iChat work with Yahoo and MSN IM. The problem I'm running into now is that I haven't kept up with people's Yahoo and MSN accounts. If you'd like to help me test, and you have an account with either of these services, let me know, and thanks!

If you're trying to do something similar, I'm using transactim.net as my Jabber server. And thanks to Chuq at Teal Sunglasses for letting me know this was even possible.

My favorite beta

Mountain Dew wants beta testers? I am so there. The number of ways in which I am qualified to test the Dew is lengthy— OTOH, the number of ways in which I'm not qualified is also. For instance, I'm about 25 years older than their target demographic. Oddly enough, though, their sign up required that I have both a title and a company name. They got the real versions of those, although they got Sean's birthdate.

This link stolen from courtesy of Brad.

AdSense Feed Hack

Google recently opened up their Google AdSense for Feeds program. If you use a feed reader that supports CSS stylesheets (as we've said, we highly recommend NetNewsWire 2.0), and you don't want to see the ads, here's the hack:

img[src*="imageads.googleadservices.com"] { display: none; }

Add that to your local CSS stylesheet, and voila! no more Google AdSense ads in your nice clean RSS feeds.

There's just one problem with this: based on Google's Terms of Service, it appears that if any of a feed's readers implement this hack, that throws the blog owner out of compliance. Or in other words, they don't have to pay you.

So if you're a blogger who puts AdSense for Feeds into your feed, you somehow have to get an acknowledgement from anyone and everyone who looks at your feed (Bloglines? Technorati?) that they'll accept ads. And then follow up with them that they're displaying them. Or else.

It's pretty clear just from the application for AdSense for Feeds that Google doesn't understand how RSS works. They want bloggers whose "feed has more than 100 active subscribers". How the hell do you know? Okay, sure, we've got close to 300 subscribers on Bloglines, but there's no way of us knowing how many of them are active.

A few other notes:

• Don't like Feedburner ads either? Here's the CSS for that:
  
  img[src*="feeds.feedburner.com"] { display: none; }
  
  I don't know how it affects Feedburner's ToS, though.
  
  
• If you use AdSense for Feeds, and you'd like me to stop reading your feed (keeping you in compliance), just let me know.
  
  
• Want to make some real money off your blog? If your blog has its own domain name, and that domain has a PageRank 6 or higher, drop me a line.
  
  
• I understand that people need/want to make some money off blogs, and it's their right to put ads into their own content. But I think that the way that Google's implementing this is just bone-stupid, as this simple demonstration shows.

Getting that Widget look

Working with Dashboard widgets, and wondering how to make them look like Dashboard widgets? Here's a couple of Photoshop how-to's: reverse engineering the shiny and Aqua Button Tutorial. I'm thinking about adding a "design" resources section to my Dashboard Resources page.

A Tough Guide to the Singularity

It's called Singularity! - A Tough Guide to the Rapture of the Nerds. It's by Charlie Stross. It's a wiki. That should be sufficient to make you leave here and go there. Enjoy.

Sean the Intimidator!

A couple of days ago, I bragged about our son Sean's SAT scores. Today he told us that he was talking about the SAT's with other kids at school, and a funny thing happened; after he said what his scores were, his schoolmates wouldn't divulge their scores. It's SAT Smackdown! We coached him to get the other kids to state their scores first.

Today's pet peeve

Today's pet peeve: People who announce in a big huff that they're leaving a mailing list… and then don't.

So far as I can tell, it's all about manipulation and wanting to see what other people will say "behind my back." Not to mention a big "screw you" to the listmom, who obviously can just look at the list of subscribers and see that they lied.

Grump.

My Keynote Visual QuickProject: Available Now!

I'm happy to announce the availability of Creating Keynote Presentations with iWork: Visual QuickProject Guide, my latest book from the fine folks at Peachpit Press. It joins the other QuickProject titles I've already got out, on PowerPoint and Quicken 2005. I've just finished up my fourth book in the series, Upgrading to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger: Visual QuickProject Guide, which will be out in about a month. I'm really happy with the way these books have turned out; the PowerPoint book, in particular has exceeded my expectations. It earned out its advance upon shipment, and has since been translated into at least two languages, French and Romanian (anyone need a Romanian copy? Let me know).

I'm going to take a whole day off (maybe tomorrow) and get a massage before I jump into my next book, which will be an update to my Keynote Visual QuickStart Guide.

Powerbook battery Q's

Anyone reading this a laptop battery guru? I need an additional battery for my 15" Aluminum Powerbook, and my options are confusing me.

According to the specs on this machine, the original part number for the battery was M9325G/A. When I go to buy it from the Apple Store, it now wants to sell me M9756G/A. That makes sense, as I know there's been a recall (one for which I didn't qualify).

There are third-party resellers on Amazon who will sell me either, though. And Small Dog (for whom I have high regard) will sell me the latter, at a price higher than Apple's.

Alternately, I could buy the BTI version of the battery, but two things worry me: first, BTI says it's a replacement for the M9325G/A, not the M9756G/A. And second, it's more expensive than Apple's.

So, what should I get? Is there a competitor I'm missing? Should I not worry that BTI's version replaces the old Apple part and not the new Apple part (as it's a replacement, after all). Does the BTI's extra value make it worth more than Apple's battery? Got a place to buy batteries that you just love?

Please answer these, and any other questions, in the comments. And thanks for your help!

Update: In the comments, Jim reminded me that NewerTech also makes a competing battery. More options... that's all I needed. Which should I get? So far as prices go, the ones I'm seeing are Apple: $128, BTI: $135, and NewerTech: $130, if that makes any difference.

Time to get off the merry-go-round

Matt Deatherage's piece from the July 2003 Macworld, Pentium envy, feels like it could have been written yesterday:

As sure as the sun rises in the east, and as sure as there will always be an England, someone will waste your time this year trying to convince you that Apple's destiny lies with Intel-compatible processors.

And that's because yesterday, the usual suspects were shopping this story around again. Yawn. Why Apple Won't Embrace Intel from Forbes gives a good rebuttal, also.

Our opinion: we wouldn't be surprised if Apple went with an Intel-produced chip (would that make it an iNtel chip?) for something Wi-Fi related. But to replace the PowerPC? Nope.

And so, we kvell

We got Sean's SAT scores today:

• Reading: 720
• Math: 750
• Writing: 630
• Total score: 2100

We're immensely proud of him. Great job, Sean! For those who aren't familiar with the new SAT test, it's now scored on a basis of 2400 points, with each of the three parts being worth 800 points. The new writing section is the bane of many students, and we're happy with Sean's score on it. We expected high reading and math scores, and he's certainly delivered.

If you're only familiar with the old verbal/math version, on that scale, he got a 1470. Whoo hoo! He kicked the ass of the scores that we got back in our day.

Considering that it was the Test Weekend From Hell (he took the Advanced Placement US History test Friday, the SAT Saturday, and the Advanced Placement Biology test Monday), we're even happier with his SAT performance.

Which film to see?

Looking at the list below, I see one true issue that's going to come up considerably sooner than Hugo voting. From the AdHoc Conference events page:

After that, there's the little things, like the pizza parties, the ice cream social, and the Really Bad Science Fiction Movie That Opened That Weekend, to be followed by Mocking the Really Bad Science Fiction Movie That Opened That Weekend, The Showcase Awards banquet, and more.

AdHoc is July 27-31. A quick look at that list shows not one, not two, but three F&SF films coming out on 29 July. We could be in for an ugly decision.

Star Wars thoughts

We saw Star Wars yesterday, and a few thoughts came to mind that I wanted to get down.

First, I owe a belated thank you to my brother Todd, who convinced my parents that we had to drive all the way to Hollywood to stand in a long line just to see some dumb sci-fi film I'd never heard of. Because of that, I've been able to say for nearly 28 years that I saw Episode 4 at Mann's Chinese opening weekend. I was 15, and it blew me away.

Second, there are a lot of people who didn't like Episide 3. Phooey. We all loved it. I had one major gripe (which is a spoiler, so I'll put it in the comments), but the movie itself made me say "Wow" in a way I haven't since I saw Episode 5 the day it came out.

It still stuns me that Sean's older now than I was that day in Hollywood.

Like Andy, my first impulse was to want to see Episode 4 again. Sadly, our only copy is on Laserdisc, and I wasn't successful at convincing Tom that we needed to hook up the player so I could watch it again.

[Aside (so long as I'm channeling Andy): the laserdisc version is the one to have. Digital and Han shoots first. Someday I'm going to figure out a way to copy it onto a DVD. And if the MPAA has a problem with me copying media I own into another format for my own viewing pleasure, they can bite me. Oh, we own E.T. on laserdisc, too. Why'd they have to go and screw up the DVD versions of both?]

And lastly, based on something I read in a Making Light comment, I started thinking about the sheer number of F & SF films that will be/have been released in 2005, and thereby eligible for the 2006 Hugo awards (yes, we'll be there, and yes, we'll be voting). Here's the list I've come up with:

• 18 February: Constantine
• 11 March: Robots
• 1 April: Sin City
• 29 April: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• 19 May: Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
• 10 June: Howl's Moving Castle
• 15 June: Batman Begins
• 17 June: War of the Worlds
• 8 July: Fantastic Four
• 15 July: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• 22 July: The Island
• 29 July: Nightwatch
• 29 July: Sky High
• 29 July: The Brothers Grimm
• 2 September: A Sound of Thunder
• 22 September: Aeon Flux
• 23 September: Corpse Bride
• 30 September: Serenity
• 18 November: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
• 23 November: Zathura
• 9 December: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• 14 December: King Kong

Note that this isn't a list of all the genre films that are being released this year, just a list of those that I suspect have a fanbase that will want their movie nominated. Given that only five can make the cut, it's going to be difficult. If I missed your fave, or I misunderstood the rules (I'm not quite sure how foreign films fit), let me know.